Chainfeeds Summary:
The next bull market requires two conditions: the emergence of a killer app in the non-compliant zone and a shift in the macro environment to support it.
Article source:
https://www.techflowpost.com/zh-CN/article/30242
Article Author:
Tiger Research
Opinion:
Tiger Research: The crypto industry has experienced three typical "winters" to date. Although they occurred at different stages, they exhibit a highly consistent evolutionary pattern. The first winter occurred in 2014, triggered by the collapse of the Mt. Gox exchange. This platform, which handled approximately 70% of global Bitcoin trading volume at the time, lost about 850,000 BTC in a hack, directly destroying market trust in centralized exchanges. Subsequently, new exchanges with stronger internal controls and auditing capabilities gradually emerged, and trust began to slowly recover. Almost simultaneously, Ethereum entered the public eye through ICOs, opening up new possibilities for financing and organization within the crypto industry. The second winter stemmed from the bursting of the ICO bubble. In 2017, the mechanism that allowed anyone to issue tokens and raise funds with just a white paper quickly fueled market hype, but the vast majority of projects lacked actual products and execution capabilities. Starting in 2018, China, South Korea, and the United States successively tightened regulations, leading to the bursting of the ICO bubble and a prolonged industry downturn. It wasn't until the global liquidity release following the 2020 pandemic that DeFi protocols like Uniswap, Compound, and Aave reignited the market. The third crypto winter was the most structurally destructive. The 2022 Terra-Luna collapse triggered a chain reaction, with Celsius, Three Arrows Capital, and FTX subsequently falling. This was no longer a simple price correction, but a systemic collapse of the industry's foundation of trust. It wasn't until the US approved a Bitcoin spot ETF in 2024, coupled with the halving cycle and pro-crypto political signals, that funds began to flow back. Looking back, the three Crypto Winter all followed the same path: major events, collapse of trust, and talent drain. Each time, it was internal industry failures that triggered the crisis—exchanges going out of control, distorted financing mechanisms, or systemic financial fraud. After the collapse of trust, builders began to doubt whether the technology was truly worth investing in, the collaborative atmosphere disintegrated, and key talent flowed to seemingly more certain fields. However, the current market environment is fundamentally different from the past. Despite declining prices and pessimistic sentiment, the triggers are primarily external: macroeconomic policy adjustments, tariff disputes, and changes in the Federal Reserve's interest rate expectations. These factors, which once drove market gains, are now similarly suppressing risk assets. The approval of ETFs itself has not negated the crypto industry, and the industry has not lost its legitimacy from within. More importantly, the builders have not left. RWA, perpetual contract DEXs, prediction markets, InfoFi, privacy computing, and other areas continue to advance. New narratives are constantly being proposed, and even if they haven't yet achieved a full-blown explosion like the 2020 DeFi Summer, they haven't been proven to be empty rhetoric. The industry structure hasn't collapsed; only the external environment has changed. After regulatory implementation, the structure of the crypto market has undergone profound changes, gradually splitting into three layers: the compliant zone, the non-compliant zone, and shared infrastructure. The compliant zone includes RWA tokenization, compliant exchanges, institutional custody, prediction markets, and compliant DeFi. This layer has a slower growth pace but large capital volume, strong stability, and significantly reduced volatility and risk. The non-compliant zone exhibits stronger speculative characteristics. Low barriers to entry and rapid innovation are common, but extreme price volatility is expected, with "100x returns in one day, zero returns the next" becoming more frequent. Its value lies not in stability, but in its role as a testing ground: new models and products are born here, and only after validation can they migrate to the compliant market. DeFi accomplished this leap, and prediction markets are attempting to replicate it. Stablecoins and oracles have become shared infrastructure connecting the two markets. The same USDC serves both institutional RWA settlements and flows to highly speculative on-chain applications. As the market fragments, funds no longer spill over in layers as before; institutional capital remains in Bitcoin through ETFs, significantly strengthening the liquidity barrier between the compliant and non-compliant markets. The next bull market still requires two conditions: first, new, truly groundbreaking use cases must emerge in the non-compliant market and migrate to the compliant market; second, the macroeconomic environment must be favorable. Crypto cannot operate independently of interest rates and liquidity. A bull market will come, but it will no longer belong to all assets.
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